Do you still see Warcraft having a future?

Lore Story
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I know I’m probably starting off dramatic here, but given that these forums are barely alive, it makes me often glance towards the US forums, Twitter and Reddit.

What I am seeing there, seperate from Reddit, is just a bunch of people intertwining real life politics constantly into the franchise.

I had an interesting thread open earlier about Baine and his datamined stuff in 10.0.7.
It opened up the discussion towards Baine and his… particular interest of the Alliance, something that I too am frustrated with. I quite enjoyed seeing people still remember how wacky Taurajo’s justification was.

Until a poster made the comparison of “white men rampaging through a “native american” tribe” with plenty of upvotes and how problematic this was.

I’m all in favor of finally taking revenge in the name of Taurajo, but not this way.

This is starting to become an ongoing problem. With mediums such as the US forums and Twitter constantly reshaping the lore to a political metaphor. It’s quite tiresome.

And I slowly see Blizzard adapting this notion.

Earlier I had a post deleted because I was insulted. I just phrased how I miss the metal aspect of Wow, the brutality, and that this was slowly being taken out of the game, and someone made a comment how this is a “social change” quoting real life political social rights like the end of slavery and such and that ofcourse I felt uncomfortable with this change, but that I should accept it.

I did not know that the metal and brutal aesthetics of Warcraft was a social problem. But am I supposed to take it that the GM agreed with said person as he removed my comment for calling his comparison a bunch of garbage?

I seriously am becoming tired. I don’t know about you guys but if these people are speaking louder and louder, I see it slowly affecting Blizzard aswell.

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Of course percieved social trends will affect Blizzard, and thus WoW. Just like they affected pretty much any american-produced franchise since the orange man, or gamergate or the gorilla, or whatever started our particular era of, erm, ‘cultural progress’.

And Blizzard isn’t in a risk-taking mood right now. Too many of their projects performed “below expectations”, as one might say, and the lawsuit and the following staff “cleanup” weren’t eactly meant to bring controversial opionions in, but to keep problematic ones out.

So yeah, I don’t find it likely that WoW will get its metal back any time soon. Puppies, cute children and soup are just so much less risky. The company motto is “gameplay first”, and they don’t want to fight a culture war, they just want to create a fine game that people will pay for. They are much more interested in getting rewards and progress and classes and customization right, than they are in the cohesion of the fantasy world behind the game.

Is that enough to keep the game alive? Quite possibly. It won’t keep many story nerds happy, but were they ever a big part of the playerbase anyways? I am at the lowest point of my engagementmin the game since possibly ever. I don’t feel at home. But they don’t really need me, if they can replace me. And… my whining notwithstanding, for now I’m still there, and so are people who came back specifically for DF and its charmes.

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If they bring back the Old Gods with the new World Tree plot it might turn out interesting, im putting my faith on the next patches.

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WoW is too big to die anytime soon, unless microsoft manages to get the purchase and pulls the plug pretty much. It’s going to be slow, but eventually Blizzard is going to alienate enough of the community piece by piece to the point where they will be forcedto transition into some sort of free to pay system and eventually fade into obscurity, as a footnote in history.

I’m likely to leave the franchise behind, when my classic journey revisitting the greatest hits comes to a close, as i have something of a distaste for alegory through carricatures and don’t have faith in them turning it around, because i don’t believe they have the necessary discipline, tact nor talent to pull such a thing off.

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I`m still not sure if this is just the organized , payed bot propaganda or something , or its just “this way” the more “west” you go .
What i mean is , it’s not just wow forums and redit , you see it in all forms of “popular” media .
Yet somehow when you speak to ordinary people , there’s hardly anyone that agree with this liberal cap .Maybe because we are in Europe and not America ? Maybe there the majority is broken in the head somehow.

There was a thread that was against gay and liberal stuff and simultaneously one that was for it on the general forum at one point .
The one against had 300 likes .
The one for had 60 .
The one against had people who said we don’t like this , just leave us alone to play like we want .
The one for had people who were belittling everyone calling them names for not “agreeing” to their view .
The one against is gone now .
The one for is still going 2 months later with its 60ish votes .

Draw your conclusions .

Regarding the future of wow . Who knows , but so far its not story oriented.
I don`t ready the quests anymore . I cant . They are so bad . This is the first time in the game since I started that I just skip and go to the dot on the map . On classic I still read every quest .
The only thing on retial that I like at the moment is the pvp gearing .
Its great linear progression with end goal . No “titanforge” no procks , no timed crap dungeons random drops . Just grind your way up to that 421 or 424 pvp gear and do bgs.
When this gets removed I will likely stop playing retail , because honestly there isn’t anything else

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Asjon. My man. Listen.

We get it, and by we I mean all few here who know that you’re right. Who know the lore, who saw the vids, who feel the vibe and mood and who know it’s not Warcraft.

But you have to understand that we can’t change that. No amount of shouting into the void that is the forums is going to make anyone suddenly go “You know what mate, you’re right, I was wrong #MakeWoWMetalAgain.” No amount of it anywhere is going to, I tried on MMO Champion too. It’s pointless.

I see you making thread after thread about this here and on the GD forums and trust me, bro. I get why, it’s because it hurts seeing Warcraft die like this. In woke bullsh*t. And you just want people who are blind to this to acklowdge that the game they’re playing isn’t World of Warcraft, but Activision Online. And somewhere you hope that if enough of them were to just push back against it, we can have our game back. But that’s not going to happen, and even if you convinced everybody here, Blizzard is gone, and Activision is woke.

On my desktop the shortcut to the game is called Activision Online and the icon is beatcop with a baton. Because it’s fitting and because I remind myself that WoW is gone, and this game is something else.

If you wanna reminisce about the good old days, I’m here for it until my sub runs out. I wish we could have Thrall back as Warchief, and whip the Horde back into shape. I wish we could have Turalyon or somebody forge the Alliance into a strong unity again, with each faction being its own culture. I wish, I wish. Just like I’m sure you do.

But you say you’re tired. I am too. I waged the same war you’re waging. Against all the naysayers and revisionists that stalk this forum. We know their names. And it’s exhausting and just makes you unhappy. It’s also pointless.

So yea, let’s just perhaps exchange ideas of what we’d do if we ran the game if that makes you feel better, I do it from time to time. Because it’s nice to talk about old Warcraft. Like discussing the potential of Turalyon beginning The Purge or the Horde moving into Ashenvale proper and claiming it for the Tauren, or Gilneas and the Night Elves resettling in Gilneas and waging a war on the undead. Or the trolls bonding with Zandalar to conquer parts of Kalimdor’s islands to settle there.

But save yourself the headache, and let it be. Warcraft has no future because Warcraft died years ago.

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If they stop focusing on night elves and humans the IP can be saved.

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Generally speaking these attitudes heil from colleges and upper middle class city people, who haven’t seen a day of manual labor or real struggle, for that matter. Unless you’re moving around those overpriced cafeterias and campuses it’s fairly unlikely you’ll find them. Both in western europe and america.

The thing is that Shadowlands pretty much was this team’s version of “Going Metal” and it backfired tremendously, because they just couldn’t pull it off. FFXIV surpassing WoW has made them realise that their place on top is no longer undisputed, but it will take another to do what WoW did to Everquest so long ago by which point it’s going to be too late.

WoW’s failings on narrative and worldbullding fundamentals have become so central that those tow have been all but uprooted. So a mere change of tone is going to do next to nothing, as it’s not has really been lost. That’s the sense of expression and artistry, where you could see the flaws, but saw the passion and intent behind them, which lent it a charm of sorts, which allowed you to look past that.

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Yes those horrible woke human hair colors will kill WoW!

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How old are you?
If I had to guess, near the range of 30? A bit older perhaps? Near 40’s?

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Who’s this question for?

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Somewhere between 1 and 120.

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For Vaelnya.

Heh I was just asking because you strike me as a millenial.

Nobody even mentioned the colour of hairstyles in this very thread, but that didn’t stop you from barging in and being judgemental, condescending and gaslighting, did it?

An interesting perspective had come to rise recently where this is a plague on video games.

But yeah, woke people are lame, and uncool. And don’t make interesting storylines. Because they’re constantly walking between the lines of not being too offensive to anything.

They can’t help but to interject their activism into everything while spouting off the famous line “entertainment was always politics”, while yes, it was. It was never this biased and could be viewed from every angle. Right now, it’s just obnoxious. We don’t want the game to become a platform for this black and white thinking. And I’m sorry, but I really don’t care if you want to dye your hair blue. Aslong as they don’t write any characters around them and take heart that we’re supposed to take them seriously.

You may say, but what about the blue haired dragon. He had a personality change. You can visit his older model in the sunwell raid, why don’t you go do it and tell me again if these are the same people.

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I wish… I miss the times when the same playerbase wasn’t split over 20 different games, very loosely connected over discord… But I can’t see any game managing a reverse on that. At this point I’d happily leave WoW behind, if there was an alternative the friends I found there could agree on.

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Well the same people literally crying about the hair color in the appropriate thread cry about woke people here. I just made a little teasing connection and I definitely did it well seeing how you react.

I wont bother getting into the details of your post (don’t want to waste that much time) and just keep it very general: Blizzard is going to write and design WoW the way they think they get the most money out of it. If it is to please the “woke people” then well, seems like the “woke people” are more willing to spend money on it then others.

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Pretty much. They’re a sh*t company so they just follow the money. That dude that got fired even admitted it. :stuck_out_tongue:

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No you’re just being obnoxious while you can’t even seem to self reflect on this. You justify your own behavior. If you don’t like what the people are writing here give your own argumentation instead of coming off as condescending referencing a previous thread.

You don’t waste that much time yet here you are. Classic. Time well spend, you choose your time well for as little time you claim you have left.

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I never claimed I have little time left, I just said I do not want to waste a lot of time here.

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That’s how both capitalism and art work. The real question is how long you’ve got to wait, as it could be as early as Riot’s MMO or many years down the line since MMO development, for the big contenders requires an already existing huge franchise and somebody willing to sink milions of dollars worth of money into development, which is likely to take years.

Speaking in terms of overall entertainment they don’t it’s something being pushed by the likes of Blackrock and still losing copious amounts of money(ie. the current mess on top levels of Disney). In terms of games it’s a bit more murky, because depending on the genere gameplay often takes precedent over things like anything related to the story, which inthe case of WoW isn’t particularly applicable, because they’ve made strides to make it a centerpiece feature, which is somewhat damning given that the general discourse is pretty much dead save the odd speculation about what could come meaning that people mostly just don’t give a damn about it, in spite of it being right in their face.

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There is a HUGE mass of MMO refugees that migrate from game to game, searching for that one that feels alive, grounded, immersive, fun, complex etc etc.

Activision Online has the ability to become that game under different management, but they won’t do it because they’re afraid of losing their current audience too after they chased away all the old players by making the game bad.